


Foreplay/Afterglow

by glenarvon



Series: The Demon and the Warrior [6]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, F/M, M/M, Mind Games, Oral Sex, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 11:33:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16158149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glenarvon/pseuds/glenarvon
Summary: "Secretly, Morinth wants Shepard bathed in sunlight and wrapped in golden rays."





	1. Foreplay

Secretly, Morinth wants Shepard bathed in sunlight and wrapped in golden rays. She recalls him mentioning Virmire and its famed beauty and she thinks maybe she shall never have him that way. It's a small sorrow, though, right here and now. She doesn't mind the cold, clinical light, the tinges of blue it edges across everything and the unforgiving white of its main focus. It's a spotlight, sharp and defined, belonging on a stage.

She has never thought they might ever reach this place, even if she has perhaps pictured it in her head in vivid colours a handful of times, only to find that, of course, whatever imagination she has harboured, they can never possibly compare. Shepard has surprised her again.

Clay is a find. A professional conman, a survivor and libertine who has grown bored and jaded in a life that has thrown him few challenges. He is as tall as Shepard, long-limbed and sable-skinned. Earlier, she has watched him as he wound his way through an art exhibit on the prowl for some new game or other, delicious to observe this other predator as he hunted.

Clay. She can sense it's not his real name, feels like plucking the truth of it from his mind later, but for now she tries to settle in her seat, letting the quiet thrumming of music wash over her and enjoy the performance.

He has his fingers tangled in Shepard's collar, yanking, only to let go to try and find purchase in the commander's too short hair, dragging him down into a hard kiss. It doesn't last and Shepard pushes himself up, breaks the grip easily and stares down at Clay for a long moment. He draws back, his shirt hangs open, it obscures her view and drags over Clay's chest as Shepard moves.

Morinth takes another sip and the fierce liquid travels down her throat with a sense of premonition or wishful thinking but Shepard doesn't look like he is going to disappoint her tonight. She leans to her side, folds her legs up on her seat and feels her weight sink into the plush.

Clay is cheap, in his way, careless of the atmosphere, grumbling some obscenity or other as he pushes himself up on his elbows. In all honesty, though, and a measure of amusement, Morinth will confess that she has never, in all her centuries, seen anyone undress as quickly as Clay has done mere minutes before.

Of course, the dynamics of it are half the appeal. By its very nature - and perhaps by _her_ very nature - Sex is _always_ a game of power. Its stakes dealing strength and submission, endurance and experience. It is a contest of wills and bodies where only the ruthless walk away. It is always the same game, but when the weapons are even, it has to be played differently; similar, Morinth thinks, to when two asari find each other.

Shepard sits back between Clay's splayed legs and shrugs the shirt from his shoulders unceremoniously. The stark white of the material billows around his waist until he pulls it completely free and discards it carelessly somewhere, outside the cone of light, where the reflection is lost in the shadows of the room.

What pleasure it must have been for Miranda, Morinth thinks and there is a measure of envy. For two years Miranda did nothing but repaint the this masterpiece. For two years, he belonged only to her alone, when she set bones beneath flesh, beneath muscle, beneath skin until every atom in every cell was in exactly the right place, harmoniously in perfect accord with all others, shaping a mangled corpse back into the war-god image.

In the vacuum left by surviving the suicide mission, Shepard finds the time to finally get the cybernetic scars treated and now they only show as very faint lines across his face and a handful of tiny fissures along his arms and torso. They will be completely healed soon and even the dark glow of his eyes will have vanished. Morinth hasn't decided yet what she makes of that.

Clay gives an appreciative whistle and Shepard tilts his head. A smile crosses his face for the briefest of moments. He turns to glance at Morinth and the smile becomes a sneer before it vanishes. Shepard leans back down and forward, above Clay, hands dragging mercilessly across his chest and Clay gasps. Expecting another kiss that never comes. Instead, Shepard presses his cheek against Clay's and whispers something into his ear that Morinth is too far away to hear. Clay's voice rises briefly in what might be protest or an exclamation of something else entirely. Clay drops his hands away from Shepard's neck and head, tangles them in the sheets for something to hold on to.

Morinth tracks Shepard's movements with her gaze, the play of cruel light on skin and the way it shifts with the quick, hard caresses he gives. Sometimes, just barely, she sees the faintest hint of hesitation, as if he has to feel his way in the dark, along pathways that are not - not quite - perfectly familiar to him.

Already half-way lost, Clay never notices. And Morinth only does because she is so ensnared - and has been from the moment she has first seen Shepard - by the symphony of his movements, the languid warrior-grace and all the smooth strength of his body. Clay only moans and arches into the touches.

Shepard wastes no time and she knows the feeling. Sometimes, the need, the hunger burns so hot in her she can feel the layers of civilisation peel away from her, useless masks acquired through millennia and discarded in moments and without sorrow.

Clay raises his hips sharply when Shepard's hands stop and settle there with deft, strong fingers and quick strokes. It takes a long moment for Clay to realise that Shepard has stopped doing anything at all, just holds him there. Clay looks down from glazed eyes, drags his knees up for better purchase on the slippery blanket.

Sinews twitch on Shepard's arms as he first shifts, then tightens his grip. He gives a few more, long strokes, but Clay is more than ready, doesn't need it, growls and lifts his hips demandingly. Shepard moves his hands again, pushes Clay back into the bed and holds him pinned like an insect, but does, in the end, relent. He bends his head, waits for another agonisingly long second and then, finally, takes Clay in his mouth. Only to stop once more, almost immediately, with just the tip inside.

Morinth jitters to the edge of her seat, acutely aware of the cool drops of condensation from her glass running down her wrist. She doesn't mind the light anymore, its unforgiving glare edges Shepard's face as if in expensive marble, the stretch along his jaw, the hollow of his cheeks.

"Fuck dammit!" Clay gasps and Morinth doesn't quite know whether its an encouragement of any kind. It does, however, sound utterly sincere. She can almost see the vibration from Shepard's mouth when he chuckles, sees it travel up the other man's body. Clay whimper, shoulders tense and his head drops back as if its strings were snapped. He bucks his hips, or at least tries to. Shepard's grip is too strong, but there is something mesmerising in the ripple of his body.

Muscles strain along the side of Shepard's neck and he turns his head just slightly to the side, just enough so he can catch and hold Morinth's gaze. His jaw moves a fraction and he peels his lips back from his teeth.

She does not remember when she has forgotten how to breath, only feels the lack of oxygen prickle along her skin. She is wrapped in vertigo, falling back into herself, a supernova reversal and the universe shrinks down around them, as if there is nothing there but the two of them and the deliberate, controlled ferocity of what they do.

Clay pants heavily. The teeth do not touch him, Morinth can tell - can almost sense it, wishes desperately to somehow share in it - but Clay knows, primally, feels it in the way Shepard has stopped moving, taunting and cruel. Tiny shudders run through Clay, trying to stay as still as possible against the threat, but Morinth is still held in Shepard's gaze, the hellfire sparkling there and for a moment she barely copes with the utter fortune of having found him. Shepard's cheek hollow slightly more, opening his mouth wider and Clay's groan hitches in suspicious relief only to stutter and die overcome with sensation. Invisible to her eyes, but she has an idea now, of what to think and she can read people in the throes of passion.

Shepard takes his heavy gaze away from Morinth and purses his damp lips, lets his eyes flutter closed and sinks down all the way, in one go.

There is a short, sharp cough, rattling in his throat as it protests and he draws back, breathes, and down. His throat adapts, she sees him swallow around him and Clay moans.

She cannot sit back and watch. Maybe she has always known it would end like this, maybe she has lied to herself and only Shepard always knew everything. She doesn't care. She leaves her glass behind, with its paltry imitation of heat and strides across the room, that empty, powerless space separating them.

She finds her seat, strokes her hands down Clay's face. He doesn't much care for her, she knows, has only agreed to come with her because she left him no choice, because she could promise him, well, _this._ But now he leans into her caress willingly. She strokes her hands down his chest, nails tearing deep as she goes. She cannot help the tiny flashes of blue stinging him, but this close she can see the way his heart beats harder and his breathing jumps.

It should be a submissive pose for Shepard, like this, servicing another and it is an appealing thought, if only because it makes the underlying power shine even brighter. And yet, this is not the place, the time, for such. Shepard has moved his hands, released the hard grip and given Clay limited freedom to move. One hand is still splayed against Clay's skin, between the jutting edges of hipbones, guiding him. From this perspective, Morinth cannot make out Shepard's other hand, but doesn't need to.

She reaches down, along the smooth muscles of Clay's arm to where his fingers clench and unclench in the blanket, nearly tearing it, knuckles standing out pale and hard. He shivers as she slides her fingers across them and it feels like there is no skin at all, just bone under her touch. She strokes, coaxes until Clay's grip loosens and she can lace her own fingers with his and he clamps around her, holds her in a subconscious vice.

Clay doesn't belong to her and she has no right to kill him, but if she is careful, she can share in this more than she has originally planned. Clay's mind is wide open, gaping, all its defences sundered long since. Sensation washes wildly through him, scattering his thoughts. Tendrils of her self slither through his mind, subtle and careful, trying hard not to connect too closely. The lure is there, to take him for herself, but she restrains herself. All she wants is a whisper of a taste, the promise of what she cannot have, from neither man.

Morinth watches Clay's face below her, leans down and breathes a kiss across his lips, then trails her other hand down his chest, has to stretch herself to get further, feels his pants against her throat and hears his muttering. She reaches down until her fingertips touch Shepard's and electricity sparks from the tiny contact.

Clay has found his rhythm, speeds it up now into hard, quick stabs as far as Shepard will let him. Morinth closes her eyes and for a moment she can feel them both. Feels her throat close with sudden obstruction, alien tissue against her tongue and feels her mind fall to pieces against heat-pressure-suction. She is in too deep, can't turn back now and the flare rushes toward her with meteorite force, taking all of them down. But Clay snaps before she does, with his heart beating so fast she can feel it through his skin against her breast. His scream is breathless, soundless, echoing into dimension mortals cannot hear, head buried back into the pillows, neck strained and throat exposed.

Her connection unravels and she snatches her hand away from Shepard, drags it back to leave Clay what room he needs as he shudders. She pants almost as much as he does, her vision distorted through black eyes when everything is in sharper focus and all her senses are acutely, painfully aware of her surrounding. The very air slices her to shreds.

For no more than an instant, Shepard startles back, furrows his brows and tightens his grip, almost pushing Clay away. It doesn't last. Morinth can see the tension leave his shoulders as quickly as it has come. He breaths sharply through his nose and Morinth tilts her head for a different angle, just in time to watch his throat contract as he swallows.

"Shit," Clay declares breathlessly. Tension bleeds from him, falls away like water, but it takes a little until he remembers to open his hands from the blanket and to release Morinth from his death-grip. He flutters a quick glance at her, smiles a little, then pushes himself up and rests his head on her thigh.

Shepard sits back on his heels. He looks merely faintly amused for all the way his lips are swollen and glistening. His eyes sparkle.

Morinth says, "Your pants must be getting tight."

Clay chuckles.

Shepard uncoils from between Clay's legs and regains his feet smoothly. He walks along the bed in two long strides and bends over Morinth, cups her face with one hand and kisses her against Clay's heated gaze, knowing it is his taste they share.

In the moment before he touches her, Morinth feels a growl at the back of her mind. Shepard always seems to do that to her, obscuring his scent and his taste. There is always something that is not quite part of him. Smoke and alcohol in his mouth, blood and soap and gunmetal on his skin. It's never just _him_ , never gives her an angle, a hook for her to hold. She can't hold him like this, can't bruise him, when he keeps eluding her. And as always, he breaks away from her too easily, lets go of her face and her lips and takes a step back.

For once, she doesn't mind. Shepard gets rid of his boots and pants with graceless, military trained movements. There is no room for titillation on a battlefield and for all its silk draping, this isn't so much different.

Morinth purrs when he is done, but it's Clay who says, "I knew you'd be good at his," and whistles again.

Shepard pays him no attention, watches Morinth's face instead.

"I'm not buying you are impressed," he says. "You had krogan lovers, Morinth."

She laughs, loves him for the self-deprecating comment and the confidently relaxed posture to go with it, most of all, though, she thinks she loves the slow, lazy way he strokes himself.

He turns his attention back to Clay. "Were you just calling me cocksucker?"

It's Morinth who gives him away, when Clay seems uncertain whether the words were in jest or not. She fails to suppress another chuckle and as close as he is, Clay picks it up. He opens his mouth, but Shepard silences him with a shake of his head.

The commander walks back to the bed.

He says, "Not the point, friend. It's just that I'm _one hell of_ whatever I do." He catches Morinth's gaze, holds it, then lets it fall away in the cruel light.

"And you haven't seen anything yet."

No, he is not going to disappoint her tonight, Morinth thinks.


	2. Afterglow

The artificial lights dimmed when the slow spread of dawn as it crawls past the wide windows in thin tendril of pale grey and pink. It would still take hours until the sun climbed high enough over the eternal cold that plastered the mountainside, broken by the harder white of the port buildings set in terraces along the slope.

Clay has fallen asleep, sprawled at the foot of the bed, a blanket drawn sloppily across his face and upper body while everything else is freely on display. Morinth watches him breath in sleep, slow and rhythmic again now, only to turn her attention away from him.

Shepard is not asleep, even though he has not moved in a while.

Bare-feet, Morinth walks back to the bed.

"Do you never sleep?" she asks.

Shepard glances her way, just briefly, then fixes his gaze again on the frozen, deadly beauty slowly being revealed outside his window. "I'm goddess-born. I don't sleep."

She chuckles, puts her hands on the bed and slides up, like an oversized pet and crosses her legs under her to sit relaxed. She breathes in deeply. Ventilation has long since let the smoke dissipate, but she wonders whether he would relinquish another of his precious cigarettes. The brand is hard to come by, even here. He is attached to the tiny destructiveness of the Tuchanka tobacco, enamoured for all he is, with the idea of defeat, of giving in, of giving up.

"I believe you," she says. "Even if I know that Chakwas wants to treat your insomnia."

"I have no time," he says back and she believes that, too, feels it when she is close enough to him. He has died once already, with everything nearly coming undone with it, the galaxy unravelling with that one man. It is beating at him, always, that knowledge of mortality, the unbreakable promise and the utter certainty of it.

It costs you, every time you risk your life. Morinth has seen into many hearts and knows, no matter how brave, there is a moment, tiny, minuscule but there, when you hesitate, when you _fear._ When you want to turn and run and hide, like your ancestors did, on whatever world they writhed. How much worse would it be for someone who knows? Someone who might have seen - as Morinth always suspects - that there is nothing on the other side.

There is the remnant of a tattoo on Shepard's right hip. Most of it is gone, jagged edges and colours changed with heat as testament to the forces that had destroyed it. Yet, the skin is perfectly smooth. She begins to reach out, wanting to trace those lines, those oddest of scars. Instead, her hand hovers in the air, as if she worries her touch would destroy it further.

Shepard catches her wrist in a surprising light touch. "I had another," he says slowly. It no longer startles her when he can follow her train of thought like this. It still sends a tiny shiver down her spine, imagining a connection going so much deeper than anything they cannot have.

"On my shoulder," he ads. "Joining the Alliance looked like a dumb decision right after I'd made it. I needed something to express it."

She folds her hand around his, tucks it along like a stolen treasure to rest in her lap. "You could have them redone."

"I'm no longer that man," he says and there is something like wistfulness in his voice.

"You are more now," she says, because she suspects it's the last thing he wants to hear. Indeed, he lets go of her abruptly, curls his hand behind his neck and slides down a little on the bed, staring at the ceiling rather than the window. A snowstorm has chased away what might have been a sunrise, filled the light with snowy gloom.

Clay stirs, rolls to his side and returns to his sleep.

"He should be dead," Morinth observes. "He'll sell this story to the highest bidder."

"One more trifle published about me," he counters and she feels the slight vibration of his shrug travel through the bed. "There'll always be someone who makes up stories and there'll always be someone who believes them. Why should I care?"

All her life, for all her flamboyance, she has been used to secrecy. A necessity in the name of survival and she has never really questioned it. She leaves her traces, of course, intentionally and not, but she has always been subtle about it. Shepard is faster in judging, quicker to dismiss a threat or to disregard a warning. He does not play safe, nor does he have to. If he hides at all, it is behind noise and blinding light, playing the thug for the public just because it suits him. One more piece of juicy gossip, whether true or not, won't matter to him.

Morinth broke her stillness, unfolds her legs and swings around - the smooth silk under her permitting the movement - and lies down to rest her head on the unyielding plane of his stomach. She reaches out once more and this time she puts her fingertips to the frayed edges of colour, but she doesn't linger. She ghosts her hands over the skin in front of her, the lightest of touches, just just enough to remind them both of where they were and with whom. Not enough to challenge him, not nearly enough to arouse.

"I could take Biotixin," she says so casually, a less perceptive man might miss the impact of it altogether.

"A biotic inhibitor?"

"We could be together then."

It's the greatest concession she is capable of making. In centuries, there has only been a select few times when she even entertained the thought - and dismissed it again immediately. Until now.

"Why?" he asks and she almost believes he is truly incredulous.

"Because I love you and I don't want to kill you."

He laughs, low in his throat. "What happened to 'you are so special, of course you'll survive it'?"

So maybe in the beginning it was just a clever lie, meant to ensnare him and bend him to her will. Only so it could become something else, later. The lie she desperately wanted to be the truth, against all odds.

"I don't think I ever believed that," she says and the honesty tastes strange all over again.

"Just try to image where we'd be if you'd been more convincing."

She feels herself go still and as she does, she can hear his heart beating not far from her ear. She cannot stop the tension from bleeding from her, can't stop him from noticing and he laughs again.

"I never bought it, Morinth," he says, as if explaining a joke that had always been on her. "I know I'm good, I'm just not _special."_

She pushes her hand down and it is half in revenge and half in want, drags her fingers back in a hard caress and imagines the rush of blood in his body. She says, "Biotixin is expensive, but you have connections."

"What's in it for you?" he asks. Of course he has been with asari before. He knows physical contact is the least important factor for asari sexuality, so much so it's nearly inconsequential when it is their minds that offer the true intimacy.

"We can be together then," she reiterates.

"We are together now," he points out. Morinth strokes her hand across him again, curls her nails into the tiny fissure of glowing red, holding him in place as if she fears him fading from her grasp.

"I want to feel you," she says. "Really feel you. Like Miranda does, or Liara, or Jack. Just because I'll be locked inside my own mind doesn't mean I couldn't feel you inside me."

When he makes no response, she unhooks her nails from his skin and sighs as she rolls to her back. She cannot tell whether he is considering what she has said, whether she has send his mind elsewhere, to those other women. It does not occur to her that maybe he might prefer to be with either of them than with her.

"The dosage would knock you out," Shepard says. "Or near enough."

It is her turn to chuckle. "I'm sure people have sacrificed more for you than that."

"Not in the bedroom, they haven't." He moves again and a moment later his hand traces along her shoulder, down the side of her breast. "Let me change the question," he says. "What's in it for me? You'll be semiconscious, if you get lucky, so how is that more satisfying than using my own hand?"

"Is that a moral question?" she asks.

He chuckles. "Did it sound like one?" And moves, still that languid indolence of a barely-there morning. Moves away from under her so her head falls to the blankets and she stares up into his face, upside down, right above her. Brilliant eyes, still flecked with demonic red.

"Do you want coffee, too?"

He vanishes from her sight without waiting for an answer. Morinth pushes herself up to her elbows, watches him as he crosses the room to where the terminal sits idle on a table before he heads for the kitchen.

Clay turns around again, now lying on his stomach, the blanket half slips from his gorgeous face.

Morinth sits up and the rooms seems suddenly empty around her. Shepard doesn't personalise his space. There is no clutter and no mess, save for the clothes that last night scattered across the smooth floor. A few datapads by the desk, Shepard's pistol and holster over the back of a chair and Morinth's own gear on the couch. It doesn't look like anyone lives in this place and while Shepard hasn't been here for a long while, his cabin on the Normandy looks almost the same.

Morinth slips to her feet and pads towards the small kitchen, stops to lean in the doorway. And there, just maybe, is a hint of the man beneath. The kitchen is as empty and clean as the rest of the apartment, appliances like new along the wall, but the levers and glass of an old coffee-machine break the style.

The sound of the coffee mill cuts through the silence, dull and merciless to join the gurgle of the boiling water.

Morinth steps over the threshold and walks until she stands close to him. It is the scent of coffee, this time, that distracts from him. She says, "And yet you haven't said no, have you?"

She sees his shoulders tense, ever so slightly, and the predator in her knows how to read the way he adjusts his balance. There is the quiet clink as he puts the spoon down on the stone of the counter. And Shepard turns, fast and devastating, a battlefield move and she doesn't fight back. He is far stronger than her and she has no doubt he could outlast even her biotics if he truly wanted to. What's more, though, is that she does not _want_ to fight him, she purrs in delight, baring her teeth with a sharp spike of pain as his hands close around her wrists. He spins her around, both her slender wrists caught in his hand and she is pushed against the cool, smooth tiles of the wall. His other, free, hand slides down her stomach, pulls her back against him and her only regret, for a tiny second, is that she never got rid of her dress, but its a thin, inconsequential barrier.

"I changed the topic for a reason," he says with a low growl in his voice and his lips ghost along the side of her jaw. "But let's be clear about one thing." He is so close he might as well be talking inside her head.

"I want you," he says and pulls her even closer, making her nerve ends flare bright blue and cold at the lure. It would be so easy to reach out and grab him, tear him down from the razor edge where he has himself so delicately balanced.

"So very very much," his voice drifts lower, a croon and growl. He punctuates his words with whips of his tongue and the faintest grind of his hips against her.

"But I'm not going to compromise," he finishes and with the steel coming into the harsh velvet of his voice. "I'm all for using some poor sucker like Clay, but if there is ever just the two of us, it's going to be fucking worth it. For both of us."

She can barely hear him over the rush of blood in her head and the cackle of power in her nerves. His meaning comes to her using other pathways, sinking right through her skin and into her very bones.

She turns her head as far as she can, sees his profile from the corner of her eyes, but cannot read his expression. In that moment, she doesn't really need to.

"I can make you want me more than life," she says.

"Yes, that's the challenge," he agrees and he lets go of her hands and loosens his grip on her, but wraps both hands around her, nuzzles her neck so she drops her forehead to press at the wall.

"Let's not take the fun out of it," he concludes. He nips at her skin and it's almost gentle, then lets go, steps back. She turns with him, lets herself melt against the wall, smiling ferally at his turned back.

A quiet, insistent beep comes from the living room, scratching the atmosphere like diamond on glass. Shepard pours himself a cup of coffee, dumps sugar in and saunters back as if nothing has happened at all.

There are several drinks in the galaxy both more potent and far more tasteful than human coffee, but Shepard has never managed to get a taste for any of them. She admits, though, that the scent is rather delicious. She pours herself a cup as well and follows him.

Shepard sits by the desk, sloppily, one legs lifted and pressed against the edge of the table. He lights himself a new cigarette as Miranda's face flickers into view. The leather cushioning of the chair snarls against his skin as he moves, reaching for his cup.

Miranda's odd sense of entitlement when it comes to Shepard always rubs Morinth the wrong way. As if bringing him back to life somehow turned him into her private possession and it's beyond Morinth why Shepard complies with that ludicrous notion. Schematics flitter across the screen in Miranda's wake as the odd calm of concentration settles around Shepard.

He looks over his shoulder, points his chin at the bed and says, "Get sleeping beauty out of here, I've got work to do."

She frowns at little and Shepard gives a distracted grin. "If you're still feeling frisky, I'm sure he'll help you out."

"Personally, I doubt it. You are more his type."

"Like you leave them a choice," he comments and there is no denying that.

Morinth slides to the bed, puts her hand lightly on Clay's shoulder, but her grip is not hard enough to wake him just yet. She says, "Didn't you promise Parasini to keep a low profile?"

"She knows how I roll," Shepard shrugs and the leather whispers again.

Outside, the storm picks up speed and ferocity, the wind loud enough to make itself heard even through the isolation. Morinth doubts Miranda's small shuttle will be able to land in Hanshan as quickly as she's estimated. There is still time. Tendrils of power bleed from her fingers into Clay's sleeping, dreaming mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Shepard says "I'm goddess-born" he is referencing both his first name and Virgil's The Aeneid.


End file.
